"Very good, your Ladyship, I will. And have a good time, and come back and cheer us up."
Everybody waved. The car went off. Connie looked back and saw Clifford sitting at the top of the steps in his house-chair. After all, he was her husband: Wragby was her home: circumstance had done it.
Mrs. Chambers held the gate and wished her ladyship a happy holiday. The car slipped out of the dark spinney that masked the park, on to the highroad where the colliers were trailing home. Hilda turned to the Crosshill Road, that was not a main road, but ran to Mansfield. Connie put on goggles. They ran beside the railway, which was in a cutting below them. Then they crossed the cutting on a bridge.
"That's the lane to the cottage!" said Connie.
Hilda glanced at it impatiently.
"It's a frightful pity we can't go straight off!" she said. "We could have been in Pall Mall by nine o'clock."
"I'm sorry for your sake," said Connie, from behind her goggles.
They were soon at Mansfield, that once-romantic, now utterly disheartening colliery town. Hilda stopped at the hotel named in the motorcar book, and took a room. The whole thing was utterly uninteresting, and she was almost too angry to talk. However, Connie had to tell her something of the man's history.
"He! He! What name do you call him by? You only say he," said Hilda.
"I've never called him by any name: nor he me: which is curious, when you come to think of it. Unless we say Lady Jane and John Thomas. But his name is Oliver Mellors."